One of my most pleasurable household tasks is organizing a small area. The usuals: Dishes, laundry, vacuuming and dusting are chores that seemingly need do-overs almost immediately after completion. Disheartening at times.
Not so with the ordering of a small drawer. An ordered drawer can last me several months. Sometimes I just open it to admire the arrangement of the items. Eventually I get careless and start to throw things in again without regard for placement but never right away.
A small drawer is best to start with. Forget the junk drawer for now. I like the “dump and sort” method of emptying all contents out first without regard to the items. Dust or vacuum the inside and consider some pretty shelf paper to line the inside. Trust me, it’s worth the extra step!
Sorting the items is the next step. Throw out all junk like the pens that don’t write, the scraps of paper that have no value, the expired coupons, dull knives, the old mascara, etc. Stuff like this lurks in a few of my drawers :(.
Decide the primary use of the space: Make-up? Stamps, cards and writing instruments? Kitchen utensils? If you don’t have enough drawers to go around, drawer dividers are fun to play with. I recently took a little field trip to the Container Store for such items but the dollar store has little sorting trays that work well too.
Maybe in the big scope of life, an ordered drawer doesn’t count much but it is the simple pleasures of the day-to-day that provide satisfaction and delight. I don’t have power to control world peace, illness in my family, the economic ups and downs but I can manage my top right desk drawer and that gives me no end of enjoyment.
Hope for the Best,
Tish
More on drawers: Open Cupboards and Messy Drawers
Hope for the Best 